I had an old 1989 Shadow ES Turbo/5spd that was fairly quick. Well' when it ran it was quick...lol
The issue with the old Myitchybushy cars was the same as most GM cars is their engine machine work was absolutely terrible. If you got one that was done right your good for yrs to come, but' if not they'd blow another head gasket every time you turn around and smoke like a train. Like on the GM Felpro also made an upgraded head gasket to compensate for Mopars poor machining but it just didn't matter, its going to blow again anyway. Oh and there that constant smoking from burning oil?
New head bolts, new gaskets, plain the head all you want its still happening again. Until you tore those engines down and resurface the block correctly it was going to continue blowing head gaskets but hey' maybe you can stop it smoking for awhile too? Win Win...lol This sent most of them to the junk yard early with low miles and killed sales volume.
After 3 head gaskets and 80k miles I simply gave mine to my brother to drive to/from work till he was tired of fooling with it and he traded it in later. Most were fixed and sold quickly a hundred times over, but my ES sure looked/ran great when it ran, that 5spd made it really fun to drive, I'd loved to have kept it but I just hate problem cars.
When my youngest boy reached driving age we saw over a dozen low mile Mopar/Myitchybushy's for sell and back then I had heard there were good ones out there that never had the head off once but we never saw one that hadn't after 60k or so. Later on I met an old Mopar mechanic who told me thats been his bread and butter for decades, without those poorly made engines he'd been out of work yrs before and said they just re-gasket them knowing they'd return often. Revolving door for repairs you know?
He made me realize Lido Iacocca and Myitchybushy built more bad cars than good and it really just depends how long the owner actually drove one if it was a good car or not, timing is everything?
Many Mopar owners from 80's up had auto trans fail early too, that was nearly unheard of before then. I owned many high mileage pre 80's "real Mopars", they were very reliable, in fact I still drove my original 1969 Dodge Super Bee as my daily until 2012 so I'm an old school Mopar man.
My nephew had a 90's Diamante that burned oil like mad but it sure looked nice, he sold it pretty fast.
In the very early 80's my friend bought a 1977 Colt wagon, the first Myitchybushy engine I ever saw in a Mopar, the very beginning of the end for sure. The engine smoked everywhere he went and a year or so later a rod went destroying the block before it even hit 70k mi. Needless to say he still curses them today.
Nobody I know had any luck with them, you always know when your behind one though so I always leave at least a car link between us at stop lights so they wont send my wife into an asthma attack and make my grill all black and sticky. Still way too many on the planet imho.
